Olivia Wilde

Olivia Wilde

Prep school exposed Olivia Wilde to the hardships of rejection early. As a senior, she was passed over for the female lead in Romeo and Juliet. That didn't stop her from making the most of her final year of high school. Wilde still described the year as the one when she decided to start taking herself seriously, taking control of the opportunities at Andover instead of being overwhelmed by them.

MARK ZUCKERBERG

MARK ZUCKERBERG

At Exeter, Zuckerberg developed an adaptive music player that worked like the iTunes' Genius software well before it debuted at Apple in 2008. Microsoft offered him a couple million dollars and a job that he turned down to go to Harvard. A classmate from that era described Zuckerberg as "oddly comfortable in his own skin."